Coping with unrequited love and losing your favorite person

17m here. around eight months ago i confessed to my best friend and was rejected. (pretty much every i knew, including our mutual friends, thought she was gonna say yes) im past the hard part now, i no longer dream of her, nor do i believe i would date her if given the chance. ive even briefly been with girls since then. but her absence has left me with a deeper longing to be understood. she was the only person who truly got me. i think of a gilles deleuze quote that says roughly "there are people, i cannot understand a thing they say... [and then there are others i understand completely]." i relate to it a lot—i understood everything she said and i sincerely believe she understood me. i do not understand anyone else, not really, even my closest friends. im honestly out of the unrequited love melodrama, but this aspect has stuck with me. it's been 8 months and no human connection has felt as intimate, as real as it did with her.

in short, i'm wondering how one copes with not being understood, with not feeling true human connection, and the longing for someone who does, or someone who did.